The Social Media phenomenon has been identified as one of the hot issues of our time and there have been numerous attempts to exploit its potential in the business world. Researchers and scientists are also increasingly turning their focus on this area (Dutot, 2013; Castelló and Ros, 2012; Proulx et al., 2012). However, we argue that there is still a great deal of misunderstanding as to how Social Media can be used effectively by business organizations. There are many claims that social media are essential to business, but understanding the hard science behind how this relatively new technology can create solid Return On Investment (ROI) or generate efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can be confusing.

For many, Social Media and Business Intelligence are now inseparable (Nagle and Pope, 2013). Indeed, even the most basic user of any social network asks themselves such questions as “How many followers do I have?” or “What’s trending today?” and it is up to Business Intelligence to tease out these answers in a comprehensive and scientific way so that the information can be organized and stored in a way that provides business value and improve decision-making (Power and Philips-Wren, 2012). This allows for companies to gain competitive edge, cut costs and release products with a higher degree of success. Combining social media and business intelligence for small and medium enterprises is even more crucial. It allows them to reach a greater audience, more effective targeting and substantial cost savings. As the same time, advertising and marketing can be created more efficiently, and changes within the organization are made (Weman, 2011; Divol et al., 2012).

This special issue looks for articles that improve the literature on both social media and business intelligence in order to help us understand how the data from social media can be used by firms in order to improve their organizational decision systems and overall performance.